Yet at the same time, before we move away from Columbus Day we can and
should better engage with a number of telling historical contexts for
the holiday, each of which can help connect us to forgotten American
histories. For example, while some of us know about the role Italian Americans played
in the holiday’s late-19th century growth, there’s virtually no
collective memory of the historical event that most contributed to that
trend. That would be the 1891 lynching of 11 Sicilian immigrants in New Orleans, triggered by the killing of the city’s police commissioner (a crime for which all 11 men had been found innocent). President Benjamin Harrison’s 1892 call
for a national observance of Columbus Day, while connected to the 400th
anniversary of the explorer’s first voyage, was also a rebuttal to this
act of mob violence and the anti-Italian sentiments it reflected.